


Use What God Gave You

by HenryWithACause (HenryBoyThatsMe)



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Anne-centric, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Meeting, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Pre-Canon, Self-Discovery, don't fuck with anne bonny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 20:38:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10557360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryBoyThatsMe/pseuds/HenryWithACause
Summary: “Use what God gave you.”Those words followed Anne throughout her life.But when words carried different meaning depending on who spoke them, and when there was no escaping James Bonny's fists or drunken desires, Anne came to an understanding:There was no God. There were only men, and the women they preyed upon.





	

“Use what God gave you.”

Those words followed Anne throughout her life.

First from her mother as a lesson in manners and common sense. She would murmur the words in that calming yet stern parental tone as she worked a brush through Anne's tangled mass of red hair before guests arrived at their house. Or when Anne would come home with skin burnt from the sun and dress torn from fighting, telling her she knew better, that fighting was dangerous and she shouldn't go looking for trouble.

Anne never fully understood what it was that God supposedly gave her or what her mother’s advice truly meant. Everything she learned came from her parents, so it was hard to know what she had that was given to her by God. But she was young, and almost everything came with some degree of confusion, so whenever those words were uttered she would nod and do her best to figure out what was expected of her in the moment.

She learned to only speak when spoken to, learned that fighting was for boys, learned to keep her dresses clean and intact, learned to suppress her instincts out of love for her mother and respect for the wisdom that she was always told came with age.

 

. . .

 

Then the words came from her husband.

“Use what God gave you.” His cadence slurred with drink and accompanied by a rough hand on her ass, pushing her towards the churning activity of whatever pub or tavern they were in.

At the very least there wasn't any mystery about his meaning for the words.

When James Bonny spoke, it was clear that God had given her breasts and a cunt. And Although there was no comfort in the phrase, there was some security in the certainty of its meaning.

There were moments when she thought back to the days before she learned her mother’s lessons, when she would kick and scream in the face of an unpleasant chore or run as far as she could until branches caught on her skirts and leaves found their way into her hair and she would march back home with knees bloody from falling, but a satisfied smile on her face all the same. That girl would never agree to what James demanded of her. That girl would have used all of her strength to resist becoming Anne Bonny. But that was before she had learned to bow her head and obey. Now she simply considered how she might have felt in the past without feeling much of anything in the present. She wore the dresses she was given and laced her corset tight enough to exaggerate her small, newly forming bosom, and walked steadily in the direction that James pushed her so as not to bring about the anger of her drunken husband.

She was still young, still learning about the world, and with each passing day she discovered more and more that the life of a woman was far from ideal. However ideal or not, it was her reality and she adapted to her reality.

 

. . .

 

She also heard the words from people she didn't know, directed at others she only saw in passing.

Everyone seemed to have different ideas about the God given traits of their fellows and having never heard anyone speak of their own divine gifts, she began to question the existence of the all powerful being.

When her parents spoke of God, she had envisioned a kind protector who only brought pain and suffering to those deserving of punishment. As she watched men get carried off of their ships with missing limbs and bloodied faces, watched whores retreat to their rooms with bruised cheeks and tears in their eyes, felt the suffocating weight of men on top of her while sweaty hands pulled at her skirts and the stench of rum filled her nostrils, she couldn't help but wonder what she and all the others had done to incur His wrath.

If God was truly as her parents had lead her to believe, then who was he protecting?

The British navy?

Surely the Almighty couldn't hold such a small number of deserving souls.

And how could he both punish sinners _and_ forgive them?

With these doubts in her mind as she sat in bed, shivering with feverish infection from an ill-healing burn on her side, she realized that nothing was watching over her.

There was no God. There were only men, and the women they preyed upon.

The revelation was a terrifying one, but it put things in perspective all the same. The state of her life made perfect sense. There was no running or fighting because wherever she ran or whoever she fought, there would always be more men to take over where James and his crew left off. It was simply the way of the world.

Or it was. Until her world turned on its axis.

 

. . .

 

Looking back, it felt as though her entire life changed in a single moment - and some might say that it did - but as it happened it felt like hundreds of moments, each with its own new realization, new joy, new fear, new idea that gradually became her life.

There was nothing different about the day to suggest that her life would change. No warning or hint. Just James and his men doing what they always did.

The rough hands on her face weren't a surprise, neither was the vice-like pressure on her jaw or the way James berated her. It was all routine. She didn't even bother to get up when she hit the floor of the tavern hard enough to bruise her knees. She knew that he'd either pick her up or just continue with her lying there, it didn't make a difference. She felt a sharp pain on her head that told her he'd grabbed ahold of her hair, and she allowed herself to be dragged up into a standing position. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she'd long since learned that crying wouldn't fix anything. She was raised to her tiptoes by the hand in her hair and she watched out the corner of her eye as its twin pulled back to strike her. She closed her eyes and waited for the impact.

But it never came.

She felt a jolt as James’s fist tightened in her hair, but it felt different somehow, less purposeful than she was used to feeling. Her eyes opened almost without her permission, driven by a confused curiosity. However, the image she was greeted with was one she never would have expected. The glint of metal at James’s throat, the hilt of a knife clutched by a stranger’s hand. Her eyes widened in surprise, unsure of how to feel. Should she fear for her life? Should she be grateful to be momentarily freed from James’s blows? Should she be angry that her husband was being threatened? Shock and confusion won out and she was left frozen in place, rooted to the spot by the fist in her hair and the weapon wielding hand of a person whose face she had yet to see. She felt as though she was frozen in time, suspended in the moment between the promise of her own pain and the possibility of her husband’s death.

And then it was over in the blink of an eye.

Distantly, she heard a voice utter a single sentence of warning, “That's no way to treat a woman, mate.” The words were English, but their meaning didn't reach her until the deed was done. Not a second passed after silence once again hit the air before the blade increased its pressure and slid roughly across James’s neck.

Blood spurted onto her face and clothes as she crumpled to the floor alongside her husband. His hand released her hair in favor of clutching his neck in a futile attempt of prolonging his quickly fading life. She backed away a few paces and hugged her knees to her chest, fearful of James even in his final moments and worried - despite the words of his killer - that she might be next.

She had no idea how much time she spent watching James bleed out on that floor, but when she finally regained control of her body, she slowly raised her head and dared to look at the face of the man who held the knife.

She'd seen him before. Never up close, but he wasn't new to the island or to the tavern. He was young, not very many years older than herself, more boy than man, really. She remembered seeing him watching the comings and goings of the Pirates, remembered wondering what he was doing, and now here he stood having just killed her husband. He still held the knife, though now it was hanging loosely by his side, not looking a threat to anyone, despite the blood still dripping from the blade. He knelt down in front of her, and her body seemed to be wary where her mind was still frozen as she felt herself retreat back even farther. He put out his hand with the promise of, “Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you, just come with me.” She wasn't sure how she was expected to believe that, given he had quite literally just murdered someone right in front of her. However, as the fog in her mind slowly cleared, one thing became incredibly obvious: James was dead. She was no longer bound in marriage to a man who hurt her on a daily basis, he wouldn't be able to let his men violate her anymore, the constant pain that he'd brought to her life was over and this boy in front of her was the reason for it. Maybe he was lying. Maybe he still planned to kill her. Maybe he would hurt her just like James had. But in that moment it didn't matter. In that moment she was free and whatever his intentions might be, the person holding his hand out for her to take had saved her. So she nodded and reached out to clasp his hand.

His palms were rough with the callouses of hard labor, but his touch was somehow delicate in spite of that, and she could feel a slight tremor in his fingers telling her that he wasn't quite as calm and confidant as he was letting on.

He pulled her to standing, then without a word he turned and lead her up the creaky steps of the tavern toward one of the small rooms on the second level. Once inside, he motioned for her to sit down in one of the chairs that the room provided. He let go of her hand when she sat and turned towards the bed, walking over to a bag of what she assumed were personal items and beginning to rifle through it while he spoke, “My name is Jack Rackham, by the way. What's yours?”

“Anne… Bonny.” She hesitated before giving her dead husband’s last name, but it no longer felt like bonds tying her to a man she hated, instead she could take it for herself and use it as she saw fit. He was gone, so the name wasn't really his anymore, was it?

“Well, Miss Bonny, I'm not sorry for killing him. The man was rotten scum. But I am sorry for ruining your dress.” He turned around, and as he walked back toward her, she noticed that he was holding a small bundle of clothes. “These will probably be too big, but they haven't got blood on them.” He dropped the clothes on the table next to her, then promptly retreated back to the bed.

None of this was going the way she’d expected. This man might have saved her, but he was still a man, and in this world there were only men and the women they preyed upon. So she waited. She waited for him to get impatient with her stillness and pull her to the bed, or simply push her to her knees in front of the chair while he undid his belt. She waited for the world to go back to normal, because if it wasn't James, it would surely be this next man. Wouldn't it?

So she waited.

She waited until he spoke again, but when he did his words started her once more, “Would you like a wet cloth to wash your face?”

She was so startled, in fact, that her responding words escaped from her throat without any permission from her brain. “What do you want from me?”

He looked taken aback at her question, almost even a little offended, but he recovered quickly with a shake of his head, “Were you married to that man?” She nodded. “Well, seeing as I just killed your husband, the least I can do is make sure you're alright.”

He may as well have been speaking another language for all that the words made sense, but he seemed determined in his generosity, so she nodded dumbly and turned towards the pile of clothes he'd left for her. She unbuttoned her dress, unlaced her corset, and dropped the soiled garments on the floor by her feet. She unfolded the clothes on the table and looked at them for a moment before putting them on. He'd been right, they would be too big on her, but Jack was scrawny and short, so it wouldn't be so terribly bad.

She secured the trousers around her hips and couldn't help but think that they felt like freedom. The feeling was so overwhelming that in that moment she vowed that she would never wear skirts again.

 

. . .

 

The clang and scrape of metal on metal rang through the air. The muscles in Anne's arm protested the weight if the sword and the force of the blows that hit against it, but her mind felt too good to give it much more thought than passing annoyance. Never had she felt more complete than she did with heavy, sharpened steel held fast in her palm like an extension of her own limb.

Jack had offered to teach her a mere few weeks ago, and in that short time she had taken to the blade almost as naturally as breathing. She thrived on it the way James had thrived on rum.

She dodged another swing from Jack and used the momentum to kick out at his legs and bring him to the ground. She stepped over him, a foot on either side of his hips, and positioned the tip of her blade at his chin. “Any last words, Rackham?”

“That's the third time you've bested me this week!” He said with labored breaths, huffing out a short laugh. “Are you sure you didn't have any training before now?”

The corner of her mouth raised in a small smile. She lowered the sword and stepped back as she extended her unoccupied hand down to help Jack stand up. “I once stabbed a servant girl with a table knife, but I don't think that counts,” she offered.

Jack looked at her a little dumbfounded, “Why on earth…? Never mind, I don't think I want to know. It seems, Miss Bonny, that you have a gift.”

A gift?

_Use what God gave you._

Every utterance of those words flashed through Anne's mind. Even though Jack hadn't actually said them, his suggestion that she had a gift for fighting reminded her of all the times she'd wondered on what exactly God may have given her. She still didn't know what all she believed in terms of a higher power, but she could definitely accept this new idea that she had been given the gift of fighting, whether it was by divine intervention, natural instincts, or simply being a quick study. Fighting meant survival, fighting meant never letting someone like James come near her ever again, fighting meant independence and freedom. Fighting meant that no longer were there only men and the women they preyed upon.

Now there was Anne Bonny and anyone who stood in her way.

**Author's Note:**

> That finale killed me and then revived me. Black Sails owns my soul. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr at lgbthenry!


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